graph paper word search puzzles

Recently out of the blue, my little guy gave me the most awesome gift!

He knows I love doing puzzles (crosswords, sudokus, word searches)

so he decided to make me a personalized word search all by himself.

We have all been reading the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling so he decided that it would be something that he would enjoy making and I would enjoy doing. I love it when we understand the same "language"! I usually can't keep up with all of the books and character's names that they read about.

He used a piece of graph paper and carefully wrote a letter in every square on the sheet! It contained many of the character's names as well as specific words from the story.(like quidditch) Then he drew a box next to each word on the list so that I could tick them off as I found them. He thought of everything, so sweet!

I was told to add any other words that I found in the puzzle to the list.

I'm sure that he didn't even realize how much he was learning from doing this activity. Starting of course with reading the book and recalling all of the information from the story, but also printing letters, printing some of the words diagonally or backwards, spelling and hand eye coordination. (those grids are tiny!)

This activity is such a great learning tool for children of all abilities. I think I'll be including these homemade puzzles when planning our themes.

*note: I discovered doing my son's puzzle that using both upper and lower case letters makes the puzzle even more challenging!

He worked so hard on this gift I decided to make him a puzzle to do too.

(and sneak in more learning ha ha!)

He was thrilled that he had an opportunity to do a Harry Potter puzzle that he didn't already know the answers to! ;o)